In reading the volume under notice, we experienced an 'excess of participation' in the richness of its stores. Hence it is full of dog's-ears, and pencilled passages, which we find it impossible to extract, and yet can scarcely consent to omit. For the present, however, we yield to necessity, promising our readers and ourselves the pleasure of an early renewal of this notice, after the volumes shall have been completed. We make a single extract, representing Scott as escaping from Abbotsford, upon which an avalanche of bores had descended, and taking refuge in the summer-cottage of his son-in-law, a mile or two distant. The touching allusion of the biographer to his recent loss, will not escape the notice of the reader: "The clatter of Sybil Grey's hoofs, the yelping of Mustard and Spice, and his own joyous shout of _reveillée_ under our windows, were the signal that he had burst his toils, and meant for that day to 'take his ease in his inn.' On descending, he was to be found seated with all his dogs and ours about him, under a spreading ash that overshadowed half the bank between the cottage and the brook, pointing the edge of his woodman's axe for himself, and listening to Tom Purdie's lecture touching the plantation that most needed thinning. After breakfast, he would take possession of a dressing-room up stairs, and write a chapter of _The Pirate_; and then, having made up and despatched his packet for Mr. Ballantyne, away to join Purdie wherever the foresters were at work--and sometimes to labor among them as strenuously as John Swanston himself--until it was time either to rejoin his own party at Abbotsford or the quiet circle of the cottage. When his guests were few and friendly, he often made them come over and meet him at Chiefswood in a body toward evening; and surely he never appeared to more amiable advantage than when helping his young people with their little arrangements upon such occasions. He was ready with all sorts of devices to supply the wants of a narrow establishment; he used to delight particularly in sinking the wine in a well under the _brae_ ere he went out, and hauling up the basket just before dinner was announced; this primitive process being, he said, what he had always practised when a young house-keeper, and in his opinion far superior in its results to any application of ice; and in the same spirit, whenever the weather was sufficiently genial, he voted for dining out of doors altogether, which at once got rid of the inconvenience of very small rooms, and made it natural and easy for the gentlemen to help the ladies, so that the paucity of servants went for nothing. Mr. Rose used to amuse himself with likening the scene and the party to the closing act of one of those little French dramas, where 'Monsieur le Compte,' and 'Madame la Comtesse,' appear feasting at a village